“I’m so sorry,” he said. Without the distraction of Rorie’s fury, he and I had the opportunity to regard each other more closely: he had fair, wavy hair and a nice, dopey face, currently arranged in an expression of contrite shame.

“Look,” I said, softening somewhat, “I know it seems like Atlanta’s in decent shape right now, but in the last week there’s been an uptick in the numbers of the virus. It’s not gone, and you do not want to get it. Stick to phone calls.”

“Yes, ma’am. I sure will.”

“Okay, then,” I said.

Back in my own vehicle, I encountered Rorie in the front seat. Every aspect of her body language screamed defiance: crossed arms, pursed lips, a resolute stare out the window. The interaction with Crash, brief though it had been, had drained away some of my rage; teenagers, I knew, were not hardwired to be excellent analysts of risk-benefit ratios. Still, I couldn’t believe Rorie had so brazenly defied me.

“We will discuss this when we get home,” I said, in as pleasant a tone as possible, not wishing to alarm Beau.

“No,” said Rorie. “I hate you.” In an anticlimactic afterthought, she added, “And I hate Herman! Why can’t we have a normal SUV like everyone else?”

My rage returned, almost causing me to run off the road. At least Crash had been apologetic! It took every ounce of self-control I possessed to prevent myself from shouting at Rorie about how stupid, how willfully dumb she was being. Even in a non-plague era, a teenager caught sneaking around with the opposite sex against the explicit instructions of her parent didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to justification. But now? Now she risked not only her own health but the health of her mother and brother, and, by extension, all the people with whom I worked.

Back at the house, we divided ourselves into factions: a sulking, disdainful Rorie, her phone confiscated, in her bedroom; and me, shaking with anger, at my desk. Poor Beau, his antennae quivering both literally and metaphorically, stood in the living room trying to figure out what had happened to produce the palpable tension in the air on this, his seventh birthday.

Sweet Beau; caught in the middle again. I went to him and picked him up and kissed him, bobbling him on my hip to make his antennae twang, even though he was too big to be bobbled.

“Promise me you’ll never become a mean teenager,” I said. “A meanager. Promise me you’ll never become a meanager.”

Beau put his hand over his heart. “Mommy. I will never become a meanager. I promise.”

—

I’D HAVE GIVEN anything, later, to have him take those words back.

17

The Omnipotence Paradox

HANNAH

SAN DIEGO

232 Days After Patient Zero